On Wednesday night this week, I drove home from the office and pulled my car into the quietly comforting space in our garage. My car chirped obediently as I plugged it in and locked it up for the night. I entered the house, petted the dogs absent-mindedly, and responded to my husband’s cheerfully welcome queries with robotic monosyllabic murmurs.
Then I crawled into bed and fell asleep within minutes.
I woke an hour later and stumbled around the kitchen searching for a rudimentary dinner. My husband hovered around, just shy of anxious, asking if he could fix me something to eat. I assured him that I would fend for myself, settling on a few weary celery stalks with cream cheese and a bunch of over-ripe grapes. I polished off my evening meal with a small handful of chocolate-covered almonds and called it good. Well, called it done, anyhow. We spent a few minutes in the yard with the dogs before retiring for the evening, and I collapsed again and slept all night.
I was startled at my behavior yet somehow not surprised. I am tired, but my fatigue is not physical. I feel spritely during my morning runs, and I bounce around the office with vigor. But my workdays are everlasting, embedded with a weariness that I cannot shake. My clients are endlessly needy, and my to do list is interminable. I cannot escape the relentless treadmill of my weekdays; they are filled with both the ever-present and exhausting known tasks, as well as eager and insistent new ones. My bed beckons earlier and earlier in the evening all the time.
I have been teary-eyed all week, for reasons large and small. The breathtaking beauty of our cabin in Cle Elum made me misty-eyed, along with the birthday of my beloved, long-deceased sister. A simple legal question from my husband about the elements of adverse possession filled me with frustration. I cried during social media videos of military homecomings, abandoned pets, and the kindness of strangers. Persistent tear pricks pelt my eyelids as I view a stack of files at the office, as I listen to voicemail messages, and as I open backed-up emails.
My body is mirroring my emotional state this week as well, with trivial but annoying aggravations. My sinuses feel tight, and I have developed itchy patches on my back. My mild but chronic allergies are making my nose run. My left eye is sore and dry. I briefly ponder if this is the beginning of the end of me and then admonish myself for making mountains out of molehills.
I click on a health article discussing current definitions of exhaustion, burnout, languishing, alonley, anxiety, and depression. I am relieved that my symptoms most closely align with burnout. I view my firm’s vacation calendar, and I am alarmed to see that I have not taken a week-long vacation in two years. I recently made a conscious effort to avoid working on weekends, but oddly enough, my billable hours have never been higher. My attitude towards my cases is lousy but curiously, I am at the top of my litigation game.
I have always prided myself of working harder than anyone else in my firm. It has been a career-long struggle – confronting the truth that committed lawyers take time away from the office and that dedicated managers set boundaries on their work lives. But awareness does not equate to behavioral change. It takes more.
I undertake life pursuits in the same way I approach any other task: articulate an outcome, describe the steps to accomplish it, and, most critically, set a deadline. Nothing fills me with more enthusiasm than envisioning a goal and figuring out to complete it. But it feels extravagant to spend both the time planning a trip – and the money it will require.
I remind myself that planning a vacation should be fun – and it is a project that is best researched in bed.